The Terrible Thing That Happened to Barnaby Brocket

by John Boyne

  “It’s a long flight, though,” added Ethel. “Do you think you can manage it?”

  “I’ll have to,” said Barnaby, pleased to think that he would have a trip in an aeroplane to add to his hot-air balloon journey. “Is the airport far from here?”

  “A few hundred miles. You’ll need to take a train. The Fonseca Express goes from São Paulo, where we are now, to New York, but it stops off in Rio along the way. You’re not in a hurry, though, are you?”

  “Well, not a terrible hurry, I suppose,” said Barnaby.

  “Good. Because we’ve checked with the airline and there isn’t a seat available until the end of the week. You can stay here in the meantime if you like.”

  Barnaby nodded. The two ladies were being kind enough to offer him not only a ticket back to Australia but free room and board; the least he could do was appear grateful.

  “Good, well, that’s all settled, then. You’ll stay here until Saturday, then off you go home. We might even have a little party in your honor before you leave. In the meantime, you might as well enjoy your time here. Do you know much about Brazil?”

  “Nothing at all,” said Barnaby, shaking his head. “We haven’t studied South America in geography class yet.”

  “I’ve always said that young people should know as much about foreign countries as they possibly can,” said Marjorie, nodding her head wisely. “Just in case they get thrown out of home.”

  “Or run away,” said Ethel.

  “Or float away,” said Marjorie, smiling at her, and Ethel burst out laughing and they jumped in the air and high-fived each other, which was something that Barnaby had never seen two elderly ladies do before. “Of course, we didn’t know anything at all about Brazil when we first got here,” she added. “But once our families decided they didn’t want anything to do with us, we wanted to get as far away from them as possible.”

  “And we both liked coffee,” said Ethel.

  “Loved coffee,” corrected Marjorie.

  “So we thought what fun it would be to start our own coffee farm.”

  “Here in Brazil.”

  “On this very plantation.”

  “And we’ve been here for—oh, how long has it been now, Ethel?”

  “Almost forty years.”

  “Has it really been that long?”

  “It has, yes.”

  “It’s hard to believe, isn’t it?”

  “Well, we’ve been so very happy,” replied Ethel, and the two ladies smiled at each other and had a little hug. Barnaby noticed that they were holding hands, which was another curious thing, but they seemed to be doing it without even noticing. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen his father and mother holding hands. In fact, Alistair had always said that people who showed any affection toward each other in public were just looking for attention, nothing more.

  “Oh dear,” said Marjorie, dabbing at her eyes with a handkerchief. “Have I got something in my eye, Ethel?”

  “Let me have a look, dear. Oh yes, you do. Just a moment. Hold still now.”

  “Oh, be careful—you know how I hate people touching my eyes.”

  “Don’t be such a goose. There, it’s all gone. Better?”

  “Much better, thank you. You’re a lifesaver. Now, Barnaby, you must be hungry. Would you like some breakfast?”

  A short time later, Barnaby was seated in the kitchen with an extraordinary amount of food spread out before him. There were eggs cooked in every possible way, sausages, strips of bacon and piles of hash browns, bowls filled with chilies and peppers, plates overflowing with roasted mushrooms and fried onions. Pitchers of orange juice and ice-cold water stood in the center of the table, and as Barnaby ate—a mosquito net thrown over his body and pinned to the floor, the top cut away for his head to poke through—he watched the farmworkers as they drifted in and out, attending to their business. They all seemed delighted to see the two ladies and greeted them with hugs and kisses.

  “Oh, Thiago, get off me, you disgusting creature,” cried Ethel, giggling a little as a rather fat man with a heavy, dark mustache threw his arms around her and squeezed her to within an inch of her life. His shirt was open halfway down his stomach; it was not a pleasant sight.

  “Ah, Miss Ethel,” he said, smiling in such a way that, just as his eyebrows pointed downward, the ends of his mustache stretched upward, so the two almost met. “It hasn’t been the same here without you. You must never leave us again.” He wagged a finger in the air, and his tone became half mocking, half serious. “The trouble there has been since you went away.”

  “Now, you know perfectly well that every so often Marjorie and I need a break,” said Ethel. “We’d go mad if we didn’t take one of our ballooning holidays. But, yes, I have heard about what’s been going on, and I’m very angry with you, Thiago. Very angry indeed. I would have expected a little more kindness and understanding on your part.”

  Barnaby frowned. For someone who was very angry, very angry indeed, Ethel did not sound annoyed, although she did sound a little disappointed.

  “Ah,” said Thiago, shaking his head and turning away, his face showing a mixed expression of sorrow and pain. “We will not talk of it now. But I see you brought a little surprise home with you.” He walked over to Barnaby and looked him up and down. “Who is this?”

  “This is Barnaby Brocket,” said Marjorie. “He’s staying with us for the rest of the week. He’s trying to get home to Australia.”

  “He’s inside a mosquito net.”

  “He floats,” she explained. “The poor boy can’t keep his feet on the ground for more than a couple of seconds.”

  Thiago chewed on the inside of his lips as he thought about this, then threw his arms in the air as if to suggest that it took all sorts to make a world.

  “You like to pick coffee beans, Barnaby?” asked Thiago.

  “I’ve never done it.”

  “You like football?”

  “Yes, but only to watch. If I try to play, I float away.”

  “Hmm. Well, what do you like to do, then?”

  Barnaby thought about it. “I like to read,” he said. “I like books.”

  “Oh dear,” said Marjorie, looking a little embarrassed. “I don’t think we have any books in the house. Not English-language ones anyway. They’re all in Portuguese. Can you read Portuguese?”

  “No,” said Barnaby, shaking his head.

  “Then I don’t think we have anything for you, I’m afraid.”

  Just as she said this, a young girl of about eighteen came into the kitchen carrying a basket filled to the brim with laundry. She stopped in her tracks when she saw the four people gathered there. And then the most extraordinary thing happened. Thiago, staring at her with an expression of fury on his face, reached across to the table, picked up Barnaby’s empty plate, and threw it on the floor, smashing it into a dozen or more pieces, before marching back outside.

  “Well, that wasn’t necessary, surely,” said Marjorie, shaking her head as she reached for a dustpan and brush.

  “You poor dear,” said Ethel, walking over to the girl and putting an arm around her. “And you shouldn’t be carrying all this laundry anyway. Not in your condition.” She took the basket and placed it on the counter. “Barnaby,” she said, turning round. “This is Palmira, who has lived with us since she was a little girl. Thiago, the gentleman who just left, is her father. He’s a little out of sorts at the moment, as you can probably tell.”

  Barnaby wasn’t sure what to say—he’d never seen such bizarre behavior—but found that he couldn’t keep his eyes off Palmira, who had quite the most beautiful face he had ever seen.

  “Don’t worry, dear,” said Marjorie, patting Palmira on the shoulder. “He’ll come round. He just needs time, that’s all.”

  The girl shook her head, her face filled with sorrow, before picking up the laundry basket again and leaving the room. Barnaby’s eyes followed her, and he was aware of a strange pang in his stomach that he’d nev
er experienced before. For the first time in his life, he felt as if he was floating up to the ceiling, even though his feet were firmly on the floor.

  Chapter 9

  Something to Read at Last

  A few days later, Barnaby was sitting on his own in one of the barns, holding a sack of coffee beans on his lap to stop himself from floating away, when Palmira came in with a glass of ice-cold orange juice and a sandwich.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, pausing in the doorway. “I didn’t know you were in here.”

  “It’s all right,” said Barnaby, who had been feeling a little lonely anyway and was glad of some company. “You can join me if you like.”

  Palmira smiled and sat beside him on one of the overturned barrels. “I usually take my breaks out here,” she said. “It’s quiet. I can be alone with my thoughts.”

  Barnaby nodded. He wondered whether she wanted to be on her own now, but he didn’t want to pass up the opportunity to spend some time with her. The night before, he’d had a dream about Palmira in which they’d decided to go back to Sydney together; a part of him wanted to tell her about it but he was too embarrassed.

  “You like it here at the farm?” she asked him.

  “Very much,” said Barnaby. “Ethel and Marjorie have been very kind to me.”

  “They are good people,” she agreed. “My father and I are very grateful to them.”

  “I like Thiago,” said Barnaby. “He taught me how to ride a donkey.”

  Barnaby thought he could see tears forming in Palmira’s eyes when he said this. She placed a hand on her stomach for a moment and held it there, and he wondered whether she was feeling sick. “He has taught me many things too,” she said. “But now he will not even speak to me.”

  “Were you born here?” asked Barnaby, and Palmira shook her head.

  “Not here,” she said. “Not even in Brazil. My family were very poor. I was born in Argentina, in a city that knew nothing but poverty. My mother died when I was a baby, and soon after this my father and I moved across the border and found this coffee farm. Miss Ethel and Miss Marjorie took us in, and we’ve been here ever since.”

  “Did you know Vincente?” asked Barnaby, who had discovered in his bedroom a set of sketchbooks filled with the most extraordinary drawings, each one signed with that name. Most of them were of people, but they weren’t quite like any people that Barnaby had seen before. The figures stood in the center of the pages, but they were surrounded by things that seemed to be part of the subject’s life. Not things they owned, but things they felt. One drawing that he particularly liked featured a young boy of about Barnaby’s age, and all around him were colors and thunderbolts, empty plates, and intricate maps of South America. When he turned it over, he found the words Self-Portrait written in a neat hand on the other side.

  “Yes, of course,” replied Palmira. “He lived here all through his youth.”

  “Can you tell me anything about him? I’ve been looking at all the work he left behind. I’ve never seen anything like it. And that enormous painting in the hallway next to the kitchen—that’s one of his, right?”

  “Yes. It’s beautiful, isn’t it? I could stare at it for hours. Miss Ethel and Miss Marjorie met him when he was only eight or nine years old. They found him creating … What is the word? Drawings and paintings on the side of a building?”

  “Art?” suggested Barnaby.

  “Graffiti,” said Palmira. “At that time, he was drawing insulting pictures of our president, who was a son of a dog and stole the wealth of the people in order to build golden bathtubs in his palace and bathe in the sweat of the working man.”

  “Gross,” said Barnaby, pulling a face.

  “It’s a metaphor,” said Palmira with a shrug. “The whole country despised this man, but we lived in fear of him too. He had the army under his control and could not be removed. He taxed us beyond our means and didn’t care whether we had enough money to feed ourselves. The newspapers were afraid to criticize him for fear they might be closed down and their editors thrown into the streets. The writers had no courage either. Only this little boy, still a child, discovered a way to express the people’s dissatisfaction with his rule. And with paint that he found who knows where—in the slum heaps, in the dustbins, in the trash piles—he created magnificent pictures on the walls of the city, full of strange colors and curious designs, which showed the world who this man was at his heart. The people became enamored of him, and the police wanted to hunt him down and capture him. If they had discovered his whereabouts, he would have been sent to jail, maybe even to his death, but one night Miss Ethel and Miss Marjorie happened upon him when they were in the city and followed him back to his slum—only to find that he lived alone in a little corner on a pile of cardboard boxes.”

  “Where were his parents?” asked Barnaby.

  “Vanished,” replied Palmira. “So they took Vincente back to the coffee farm and brought him up as if he was their own son. They educated him, gave him clean canvases and expensive paints and brushes, encouraged his talent to grow more and more every day. Finally, he became a great painter and left for New York, where he soon became one of the most famous and celebrated artists in the land. And he owes it all to those two ladies.”

  “There seem to be a lot of people here without families,” said Barnaby. “Ethel and Marjorie told me that they were sent away from their families too. Because they were different. But they seem perfectly normal to me.”

  Palmira smiled. “That’s because they are,” she said. “We all are. Their idea of normal just happens to be different from some other people’s idea of normal. But this is the world we live in. Some people simply cannot accept something that is outside of their experience.”

  “My mother had never known anyone who floated before,” said Barnaby. “I think that’s why she cut a hole in my rucksack.” He thought about it and bowed his head a little. “Maybe she just didn’t love me,” he said. “Not the way I am.”

  “A mother will always love her child,” said Palmira, putting an arm around him and pulling him close. “No matter what he does or who he is. I know this for certain. I know it already.”

  Barnaby cuddled up closer to Palmira and said nothing more, feeling very sad that he was here in Brazil with people he barely knew and not in Sydney, throwing a ball around the living room for Captain W. E. Johns. He would have happily stayed in Palmira’s embrace for the entire afternoon, only a sound behind them made them both turn round to see Thiago standing on the other side of the barn, listening to their conversation. Perhaps it was the way the sunlight was streaming in through the opposite doors, but Barnaby was sure that his cheeks were wet, as if he had been crying. But he couldn’t look for long because the moment they turned round and Thiago realized that he had been discovered, he disappeared out into the coffee farm.

  On Friday night, the ladies held a barbecue for Barnaby to wish him well on his journey back to Australia. They gave him two tickets in a colorful envelope, one for the train to Rio de Janeiro, the other for the plane back to Sydney, and later, when he went to thank them for their many kindnesses, he found them talking to one of the women who worked on the farm.

  “And Palmira hasn’t heard from him since he left?” Marjorie was saying, and Barnaby frowned, wondering who they were talking about.

  “Not a word. There’s more chance of the Stone Age returning than there is of that boy coming back to São Paulo,” said the woman, whose name was Maria-Consuela. “There’s more chance of dinosaurs ruling the Earth once again! We all knew he was bad news from the start. I said it and you both heard me. I took one look at that pretty face and said he was the devil incarnate! El diablo! And I promise you that if Thiago ever catches up with him, there will be trouble like there has never been before.”

  “Well, if that brutish boy is gone, then good riddance to him,” said Ethel. “I only wish Thiago would take care of Palmira again. He’s lost without her, anyone can see that. And she needs her father now more
than ever before. It seems to me that if—Oh, Barnaby! Did no one ever tell you that you shouldn’t eavesdrop on other people’s conversations?”

  “I’m sorry,” he said quickly. “Only I wanted to thank you for letting me stay here this week.”

  “You’re very welcome,” said Ethel. “But are you really sure you want to go? Your parents did such a terrible thing, after all. I don’t know why you want to go back there.”

  “They might be regretting it now,” said Barnaby. “If I can just get back to Australia, then I’ll know for sure. Thiago bought me a postcard in the village, and I’m going to send it to them tomorrow to tell them I’m on my way.”

  “I think we should have a toast,” said Marjorie, calling all the workers together and raising her glass to Barnaby. “What fun it’s been to have you here,” she said. “And I think Palmira has a little present for you, don’t you, dear?”

  The girl stepped forward, a shy smile on her face that made Barnaby’s heart skip a beat. “Since you are leaving us, I thought you might like something to remember us by,” she said, handing him a beautifully wrapped package. “Something to remember me by.”

  Barnaby smiled in excitement as he took off the paper and was delighted to find a small English-language edition of the Adventures of Sherlock Holmes inside. He hadn’t read anything in a week and was worried that his imagination was going to close down for good.

  “Thank you!” he said, rushing forward and giving her a hug. “But where did you find it? I thought there were no English books here.”

  “I have my ways,” she said, winking at him. Seeing how much pleasure she had given the boy with a single book made everyone at the barbecue burst into a round of applause, and Palmira smiled at them, gazing around in happiness at this unusual family before locking eyes with the one she loved most of all, her father, Thiago. His face was grim, but then he started to smile, remembering how she had consoled Barnaby when he was upset about his family, and seeing how she had delighted him by offering this thoughtful gift, and his heart broke for the daughter he loved as he ran forward and wrapped his arms around her, holding her close, and whispering words in her ear that made her understand she had a father who would never be separated from her or her baby ever again.